I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my recording process, recording advice, etc and so on. So today I’m starting a new series called Home Recording Studio Tips. Let’s start with my background…
My Audio Recording Background
As an 8 year old, my favorite “toy” was a cassette recorder. I’d record songs from the radio, I’d make my own “comedy” tapes, and I’d record myself on the piano. Eventually I got a decent quality Sharp stereo cassette deck. And I started recording music “for real” when I won our local town talent show with an original piano piece and spent the prize money on two microphones to connect to my tape deck.
Between my senior year of high school and third year of college I was in an original band called Maxwell Grant, and we recorded to tape decks a lot. We also went into various recording studios, which were 8 and 16 tracks, and recorded some music that way. And I LOVED the studio. In my senior year of college I took electronic music composition and learned analog synthesis on a big Moog, and recorded to half inch tape 4 track and a cassette-based 4 track. Eventually I bought my own 4 track cassette, and after that I bought an Alesis sequencer and drum machine (the famous HR16.) With a sync track recorded on track 4, that gave me three tracks for audio and my drums and keyboards could be sequenced.
Any of this feel familiar to you old timers out there? 🙂
I moved to a computer for sequencing (a Mac Plus) and then eventually to a digital audio workstation (DAW) on a faster Mac (a Mac LC III.) After that was a Umax C500 Mac clone, then a white iMac, and now a Mac Mini i5 with 8 GB RAM – a pretty modest computer, but more than enough horsepower for what I do. I’ve been through a lot of DAW software – from a free version of Pro Tools that had only 8 tracks and no reverb, to Cubase, Nuendo, GarageBand, and eventually Logic Pro X, which I run now.
I’ve been in more recording studios than I can remember. I play guitar, bass, keyboards, and I sing. I can play drums, but not very well. I am madly in love with Logic Pro X. I use both Mac and Windows at home and at work. If Logic Pro X were available in Windows, I’d probably run a PC because cheap hardware. I’ve used the modern version of Pro Tools (which costs around $300 a year) and I prefer Logic Pro X.
My Music Education
As a senior in high school I studied piano and music theory at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. I received an AAS in Music Merchandising from Genesee Community College and a BS in Music Business from the State University of New York at Fredonia. I worked in music retail and hated it. My experiences working in live sound and in recording studios taught me that I didn’t want to do those things full time. Currently I’m a web developer/designer. That’s my day job. Music is what I do when I’m not at work.
My Music
Between 2004 and 2018 I released four albums, all of which are available on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, and all of the other places you can listen to music online (including YouTube.) I’ve had music licensed for use by Kroger, Walgreens, and several other chains. I’m a member of ASCAP. I’ve done TV and radio interviews, I’ve played more gigs than I can remember, and I get royalty checks from sales and streaming by listeners from all over the world.
I must have made a lot of money, huh? Nope! There’s very little money in this, unless you get millions of streams (which I definitely don’t have.) I do this part time for fun. And it IS fun. It’s fun to get a phone call from a relative saying “I just heard your song at the drug store!” It’s fun to get emails from people I don’t know who say they enjoy my music. Mostly it’s fun to walk into my home studio and create music.
Summary
I’ve had my own home recording studio for a long, long time. I know what I’m doing, but there’s still a lot for me to learn and improve. I’m going to share what I know via this website. I already have 9 posts on recording that you can check out here on this site, but I’ll be adding a lot more. I look forward to documenting the process of making my 5th album here, on this very site. If there’s anything you’d like to learn about, please email me and I’ll try to address it. I can’t wait to get started!
